The University of Ghana has provided justification for the change made to the academic year 2022–2023 academic facility user fees.
The University said that the price adjustment is legal because it is based on rates that have been approved by Parliament and announced by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC).
In an press release issued by the Management of the school it said, “the University decided to suspend the increment of fees in 2019/2020 academic year by 5% which was given approval by Parliament to all public universities since the university received the letter only after it had already announced fees for that academic year which made it late for the school to implement the new fees.”
The statement added that, “the University Management decided to suspend the implementation of the new fees until 2020/2021 academic year even though the gazetted approved fees for the 2019/2020 academic year were found to be higher than the already charged fees we requested students to pay. This was to spare students from a fee increase in the middle of the 2019/2020 academic year.”
According to the statement signed by the Registrar of the University, Emelia Agyei-Mensah, “With the outbreak of Covid-19 in March 2020, coupled with its associated challenges, Management accepted a plea from the student leadership (SRC and GRASAG) to further suspend the implementation of the parliamentary approved and gazetted fees until the 2021/2022 academic year. In effect, therefore, the University of Ghana charged students subsidized fees for the 2019/2020, 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 academic years, rather than the approved rates.”
Due to rising operating costs before GTEC’s fresh approval of the 15% price increase on December 16, 2022, the University indicated that it had therefore implemented the 2019/2020 approved fees on December 13, 2022.